Quine essay

The term “naturalism” has been understood in various ways; we need to see what Quine’s naturalism comes to. At one point, he describes naturalism as “the recognition that it is within science itself, and not in some prior philosophy, that reality is to be identified and described” (1981, 21).

Over the course of his career, Quine published numerous technical and expository papers on formal logic, some of which are reprinted in his Selected Logic Papers and in The Ways of Paradox. His most well-known collection of papers is From A Logical Point of View.

Quine approaches his naturalistic analogue of metaphysics through the idea of regimented theory. Regimented theory is our overall science, the sum total of our best and most objective knowledge about the world, reformulated in the clearest and simplest form.

The third section is devoted to Quine’s arguments against the use that the Logical Empiricists made of the analytic-synthetic distinction, and the view that he worked out to take its place. The subsequent three sections go systematically through Quine’s own views; the final section is on Quine’s place in the history of philosophy. 1.